Mike Elenbaas
Black & Veatch

Kurt Wakeling
PacifiCorp

Brent Denham
PacifiCorp

Ryan Roy

Western Power Pool

DESCRIPTION

Hydro’s role in energy transition, capacity, energy, flexibility, and storage can hydro meet the challenge.  Hear from industry how hydro generation is meeting the energy transition challenge and keeping the grid reliable.

Who Should Attend:
Generation, Transmission, Owners Operators, System Operators, and Water Management teams.
 
Why You Should Attend:  
Lessons on how hydropower is and can be used to support the energy transition to guide attendees in their own organizations.

Moderator: 
Mike Elenbaas, Associate Vice President, Black & Veatch

Panelists: 

• Brent Denham, Principal Project Manager, Renewable Energy Development, PacifiCorp, Adding solar generation at existing Hydro facilities to firm capacity and maximize existing interconnection rights. 
• Kurt Wakeling, Sr. Resource Operations Analyst, PacifiCorp, Coordination of Hydro operations with day-ahead market.
• Ryan Roy, Director of Operations and Technology Western Power Pool, Western Resource Adequacy Program

Speaker Bios:

• Mike Elenbaas is an Associate Vice President at Black & Veatch and leads business development for the Energy team for the Pacific Northwest region. With over 24 years at the company and in the utility industry, Mike has a long history serving electric utilities as a consultant and executive for Black & Veatch projects. This includes approximately 15 years for Black & Veatch’s global advisory team, having led the Capital Prioritization practice during that time. Projects include leading integrated resource planning and expert witness testimony for energy transition projects across the U.S. and globally, and several mega project business cases for energy and water clients.
• Kurt Wakeling has worked at PacifiCorp for nearly ten years, spending his first five as a mechanical engineer completing projects on the hydro units before switching to a resource planning role, still focusing on the hydro units.
• Brent Denham is Principal Project Manager at PacifiCorp in the Renewable Energy Development team.  Brent has worked in renewable energy; engineering, evaluation, and construction for 28 years with a fucus on hydro and wind.  Brent Denham is presenting on behalf of Shruti Ladge.
• Ryan Roy is the Director of Operations and Technology at the Western Power Pool (WPP) and oversees the day-to-day functioning of WPP’s Operations, Planning and Grid Integration programs as well as the staff that manage and support those programs. Mr. Roy acts as the primary subject matter expert on scheduling, trading, BAA / merchant operations issues and hydro modeling for the Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP), Pacific Northwest Coordination Agreement (PNCA) and the Reserve Sharing Group (RSG). Prior to joining WPP in 2021, Mr. Roy spent 18 years working in public power most recently as the Manager of Short-Term Trading and Operations at Chelan County Public Utility District. In his role at Chelan PUD, he was responsible for the day-ahead trading function and management and optimization of Chelan’s hydro generating resources.